I paced slowly around Irimar’s drawing room. It was a big space, and was well-suited to pacing. The girls had nodded off after their meal; when I spoke, it was softly.
“You didn’t see them coming? Really?”
Irimar, seated on a couch near the fireplace with his eyes closed and hands on his knees, replied: “Truly. The appearance of such creatures – even once, I thought it a veridical miracle, a divine action… Now, twice, in such a short period of time? Is this the start of some new trend? Will the generation after ours face hordes of arch-archmages? When a pair of twins like these becomes darkmage… I would not wish to see the results.”
“She wanted me to kill them,” I murmured, half to myself.
There was no pause before he gave the measured reply – none I could discern, at least.
“Tyr Kayn could have used you in any number of ways.” Irimar’s voice was level, soothing in tone, even if his words had the opposite effect. “We’re fortunate to be rid of her, and to have the wards now in place to warn of a return. Don’t fret over it.”
But my twins… my twins… Will they become archmages?
There was no chance, really, was there? To have siblings become archmages was surpassingly rare, despite the shared bloodline. No, the point was that everyone had the blood – almost everyone in the damn world would have a share of the Five’s line of descent, by now, surely. Archmagery was truly random, wasn’t it?
To have twins chosen, whose brother was already an archmage? The possibility had to be infinitesimally tiny.
I drew a breath. I was getting distracted.
“I don’t even know how she thought I’d have been able to achieve it, anyway. How would I get through a shield like this one?”
“The Ceryad, likely.”
Of course…
Then I looked over at Irimar, wanting to catch him in his responses, test whether I could surprise him. “So how long were you able to speak Etheric for, really?”
I stopped pacing near him, and he just shook his head, eyes still closed.
“Diviners can speak all mortal tongues,” he said. “I tried their own dialect first, of course, but our power gives us no special insight into the planar languages. We would have to learn them from scratch, which is not so simple for the rest of us, Kas. They resist comprehension. They are living things.”
“Yet you expect me to believe you didn’t know how I’d end up getting through to them. You, who wore a spell to see shields when you just happened to be in the camps…”
He sighed, and opened his eyes, looking directly at me. “It wasn’t like that. You have to know, I knew you’d know – I knew you could ask this. You no longer carry that abominable Slave within your skull.”
More lies. Killstop… Everseer… they changed me.
“Was it to see how I answered the question? Whether they ought to trust you?”
“… Yes.”
“Why, Irimar? Damn it, man!” I felt myself tearing up all of a sudden – it was anger as much as it was sorrow, and it was hard to control the volume of my voice. “You performed the ritual before I ever got here, didn’t you? I get it now!”
Sitting there, pretending not to know how to communicate with the sorceresses. Lulling all three of us into a false sense of reality when it was all just another game, to him – a game…
“I have no way to change your mind about me, do I, Kas? Everything I try, it rots… I give you the lich’s book, but my reticence, my warnings alone are enough to earn your ire. I work to keep you from Magicrux Zyger, but my silence on this effort – a silence required to minimise the risks of making it come true – is seen as betrayal… And now, I –”
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“You call me here on Yearsend!” I blurted. “You call me here, and trick me into telling these girls what I think of you, disguising your ability to follow my every word! It’s sick, man. Sick. You want to know what I really think? I think you’re dangerous. Believing in you, it’s dangerous. What if we just ‘prodded’ Direcrown? Would he be out there right now, sacrificing more souls to the Fish-Queen? What’s your vision truly worth, Irimar, if everything worth seeing is as dark to you as it is to a blind man?”
“I…” He spoke the word then paused, a long pause of ten seconds or more, a span of time surely representing more turmoil of thoughts than I’d ever experienced myself. “I just r-really didn’t want Duskdown to be right. I’m – I’m sorry, for what it’s worth, Kas.”
“So that’s your explanation. That’s why you almost let Direcrown go free.”
“I couldn’t see it! I couldn’t –“
“That’s what eyes are for!” I raised my voice, and then checked myself, barely restraining my rage. “You don’t need powers to see things, Irimar! You’re… senseless! Literally. You’re nonsense. ‘Oh, does my friend trust me? Better lie to him a bunch, see what he really thinks of me, that’ll work.’ And you’re a diviner! The greatest of them all!”
“Hardly,” he muttered, scowling now. “Tanra – Tanra’s your Great One, Kas. Don’t ever forget it. She’ll know what I know, and Everseer before me, and Blinkwind before her… Trust her, at least? The first time I tested her I couldn’t understand,” he laughed a little, perhaps at himself, “but I think now she saw through the test, failed it deliberately to spite me. Since then she’s only grown in power. I think… I think she knew what I was doing, and why. That night – when I thought Emrelet was coming with you to my house, before we went to meet the dragon-slayers – that wasn’t your old pet clouding my sight. That was Tanra. Killstop’s made an impression on you, Feychilde. Let’s hope it lasts. You need a liar you can believe in. Someone to hold your heart in their hand. Someone you can trust… Love, even…”
I stared at him in shock.
My throat made an involuntary clicking, almost strangled sound. “So now you want me to, what, fall in love with Killstop? You –“
“You’d do a damn sight better falling for her than your current fixation!” he snapped, then fell dreadfully silent, closing his eyes once more.
“Those are ominous words, from you,” I said quietly, unable to tear my gaze from his paling face. “And, frankly, a bit disgusting. You tell me Em’s… Em’s not right for me, and I’m supposed to just… believe you?”
“No – but you do. You already know it. Fall in love with Killstop – those are your words, not mine.”
“You’re a jerk, Timewaster.” I turned to head for the garden doors. “What would Bor have to say if I told him? You know, you turn up at Kani’s wedding reception, even though you’ve barely said a word to the bride or groom since they got here – and then you won’t even come with us after, don’t want to hang out with the uncool kids – but you want all this trust, all this love – I don’t get you, man.”
I put my hand on the door-latch.
“I’m alone, Feychilde.”
His voice didn’t quiver – it throbbed.
“I’m alone,” he repeated, the resignation in his voice undeniable. “Perri… Lightblind… is gone. L-Lovebright – I thought I knew her, and she’s gone too. Tyr Kayn…” This time his voice shook on the name. “And when I’m there with you – and you’re all… together, and I’m alone? Fang – she’s almost stopped visiting with you, hasn’t she? Leafcloak’s death and Nighteye’s disappearance, they hit her hard, and we weren’t there for her. Sunspring knew. Sunspring was there for her. But me? All I had was my hate. All I had was him. And in his last moment, even then when I caught him, he ruined it! He ruined it for me, don’t you see? He knew that, that afterwards I would see it for what it was! He took away my only pleasure, the one thing I thought could bring me some sliver of solace! I only caught him, because he tried to save… tried to stop… Don’t I deserve one present this year? Not one?”
He broke into sobs.
It was all too easy to forget, he was probably only a few years older than me. He spoke like a man at least ten years his senior, but – it was all an act. The studious face was thinner than ever, his eyes sunken in their sockets. He was suffering.
He had the power to unlock the past, present and future – but he was no mastermind. It wasn’t in his nature. It was just a show. He was yet another starry-eyed hero like the rest of us, doing his best to deal with the hand he’d been dealt.
I moved away from the doors, closer to him, and reached out, awkwardly patting him on the back.
“Come on, Irimar. It’s okay. You’re not alone. But I think – I think you have to trust too. You have to let it go, sometimes. Don’t be the arch-diviner all the time, you know? Trust us to do the right thing, like you did in Zadhal…”
“That was before,” he said bitterly.
Before Lightblind was murdered. Before Lovebright was unmasked.
“I know,” I whispered.
“Kas!” Tanra screamed in my ear.
I recoiled – she was there, behind me, in her Killstop attire with the mask pushed up. Her round face was contorted, button nose all wrinkled, like she was enraged or terrified or something.
“Tanra! Happy –“
“It’s the twins –” she panted.
“They’re safe.”
“What do you mean?” she moaned, grabbing me by the front of my robe, bunching her fists in the fabric. “What does that mean!” she screamed.
“He indicates the twin sorceresses in the next room.” Timesnatcher rose slowly to his feet; where moments ago his face had been flushed, now it was etched in concern. “What is it, Tanra? I can’t see it – there’s a mist on the water –“
“Inkatra!” she snarled. “Keep looking! Not sorceresses!” She snapped her eyes back to mine, gazing imploringly into my soul. “Your twins, Kas! Your twins!”